Design Wall Monday - Donation Blocks

Over the weekend I sewed some blocks for the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild. 

4 donation blocks

They are collecting blocks and making quilts for 
the victims and first responders of the mass shooting there one month ago. I heard about their block collection from Julie who blogs over at Julie's Quilts. To see the beautiful donation quilt she made - click here.
The block pattern they are requesting is from the tutorial for "Greyscale Quilt" which can be found over at Cluck, Cluck, Sew. The hardest part was figuring out the cutting instructions to make the A blocks and the B blocks. But once that was done, the sewing was really enjoyable.

It made me smile to notice that one of my fabric choices matched my little scissors! What are the chances of that?!?

While sewing the first blocks, I heard on the news about another mass shooting, this time in Texas. I just kept on sewing. We also had a shooting in my quiet little neighbourhood this past week, and thankfully no one was injured. What else can a quilter do about these tragedies, but sew, and make quilts to comfort those affected by the violence?
These blocks will go in the mailbox tomorrow to hopefully arrive before the deadline of November 15th.
To see more design wall posts, hop over to Small Quilts.

Quilt Bee Report

Photo by Mitzi Designs

My quilt guild recently hosted a bee day and we had a very productive day working on various charity quilt projects. The comfort quilt committee did a terrific job of organizing projects for us to work on. And we had our very own photographer Mitzi documenting our day in photographs.

This is the package I worked on in the morning. See how everything is measured, labelled and perfectly organized to make the quilt top! The 12" blocks in the bag were made by guild members throughout the year using the pattern called "Divide and Conquer" (a free download at Pellon).

Here's the finished quilt top.
Kind of funky and definitely not my cup of tea, but I'm sure it will find a home with someone who likes it more than I do!
It's a true challenge to work on a project with colours you didn't chose, blocks you didn't make, where sewers have used a wide variety of 1/4" seams, and get it all to come together in some kind of coherent fashion. It was a great brain exercise for me. It will be quilted and finished by someone else in the guild.

Photo by Mitzi Design

Then I worked on piecing blocks for another project. Our photographer got some interesting photos and here is one of them. I was piecing blocks on Lucy (my long bed Singer 301).

Photo by Mitzi Designs

Here is a photo of Colleen and I. We were working on the same churn dash blocks using different colourways of the similar fabrics. 









It was a relaxing day of sewing quilts and visiting with friends, almost like an old fashioned Quilting Bee!

Grand Illusion Resurfaces

This quilt was a Quiltville mystery that started in November 2014. Although I enjoyed piecing it, and really liked the fabrics I had originally picked, it never really grew on me like most quilts do. I did make two changes that helped me to like the quilt more (removed the green and changed the border) but still it didn't make my heart sing. 
So I decided that it would be a comfort quilt to donate to my quilt guild. Once that was decided, the quilt project fell deep into the UFO closet!
This Saturday my quilt guild is having a Bee Day, so this is the quilt I'm going to spend the day working on. I am collecting the leftover blocks and yardage to be organized and gathering all the supplies I will need to move this quilt forward toward a finish.

Good News - A Finished Quilt!

Machine quilting with walking foot

This is going to be called the FUN quilt! I started it at a quilt guild party with many wonderful friends, and I had such a great time quilting it. 

Quilt Backing

I knew I had to use a "forgiving" quilt design, because the backing was wonky, plus I had stitched together 4 chunks of leftover batting, and that turned out wavy too.
So I decided on a very simple quilt design - just some straight wavy lines (is that an oxymoron?!?) 
Simple. Stress-free. FUN!


If you are not confident about your machine quilting but would like to improve, you must try this. Put on your walking foot and just quilt vertical lines across your quilt. It holds the layers together and it is very forgiving. For more great information about quilting with a walking foot, hop over to PetitDesignCo. and you will find enough ideas and inspiration to last the rest of your quilting days! The walking foot design I used is shown on day 9. 

I added a scrappy binding and then enjoyed some relaxing hand stitching while watching the Masters golf tournament on Sunday.

The sun even came out to shine on the quilt for a photo op!
This quilt will be donated to my guild's comfort quilt project, and I know it will warm a little girl's heart.

I am linking this post to Patchwork Times and TGIFF...
lots of inspiration to enjoy!

Finished UFO!

Yep...right on the very last day of the month! 
And that is why deadlines work for me. If I didn't join the Lovely Year of Finishes, and commit to finishing this project in January, it would still be in pieces in the UFO closet. 
Here it is being quilted by my trusty old Brother 1500. It has been such a work horse machine for the last 12 years.

I tried a new (to me) quilting design for this flannel quilt - a variation of clam shells.  The shell shapes on the center snowball blocks were easy and things went downhill from there! LOL 




I think many (most!) of my shells are quite a bit wonky in places, and as I was quilting, I was thinking of ways to make it a little more organized and even the next time I try it. 
But overall it was a fun and quick design to quilt and I am happy with it.

This is the backing, with lots of trees, and moose, and pinecones. The piece I bought wasn't quite wide enough, so I added a green strip on one side.
I realized as I was making up the scrappy binding that there are scraps of four different flannel projects in this quilt! 

Hop over to the UFO link up to see the other projects that were finished in January.

June UFO Finished!

This month was challenging in terms of finishing  #12 on my UFO wish list, but in the end...it was accomplished by the deadline, and I am very pleased with how it turned out! 
This UFO started the month being a pile of blocks, a couple of which required reconstructive surgery! 
Then I added three borders...two scrappy and one easy. It was a fun part of the creative process of finishing this quilt to challenge myself to use up as many of the scraps as possible in the first two borders.
The machine quilting was fun. I tried a new (to me) free motion idea in the blocks, 4 large melon shapes and 4 small melon shapes. Although it was a lot of stops and starts (32 to be exact!) I enjoyed quilting the block designs.

Here are the quilting designs on the two last borders...all "eyeballed" and free motion. No marking to do, but you must park any OCD tendencies at the door, since it is WAY far from perfect! In my quilting world, completion is preferred over perfection!
This is the yummy orange and yellow plaid on the back of the quilt. I really dislike how the corners of the quilting design on the last border came together. But again I remind myself...completion is preferred over perfection!
And this is one more finished UFO that will be donated to my guild's comfort quilt project. The finished size is 52" x 64".

I really like this photo of the quilt with the sun shining on the quilting and giving it lots of texture. 
Today marks the half way point of 2012, and I am so pleased that I have finished half of the UFO's from my 2012 wish list...I am 6 for 6!
However, #3 is the project number that Judy picked for July, and it's a big quilt (Roll, Roll, Cotton Bowl) so I might break my finishing streak this month.
Hop over to Patchwork Times to see the other #12 UFO projects that were completed this month.

First Finish of 2012

This is my first finished quilt of 2012!

The batik quilt blocks were donated by Beverly from my quilt guild. She didn't like the blocks and I loved them...aren't they so colourful and happy?!?  
I put a purple sashing around the blocks last April, and bought the purple with orange flowers batik for the backing in June. You can see the backing in the top left corner of this photo... it's so pretty. 

I did a very simple machine quilting pattern...wavy lines around the squares in each block and a few wavy lines down the sashing. It's my favorite quilting design to use when I want something fast and easy to get a quilt finished.

I like to try new techniques so thought I would try putting on the binding Annie's way, which is to sew on the binding first and then trim the quilt after. She said that the backing and batting lay flatter, and she never has wavy edges. I usually trim the quilt first and then add the binding after.

So I tried Annie's way and the quilt edges are indeed very flat. However, I nicked one of the corners when I was trimming the batting...can you see here where I cut the fold...yikes! The cut only went through 1 layer of my bifold binding, so I just left it :) Next time I'll try to be more careful with the trimming!

Thanks for the tips Annie on trying a new binding technique! Isn't blogland wonderful?!?
This quilt will be donated to my guild's community outreach program.

A Quick Finish

When doing some spring cleaning I found an "almost finished" quilt top that I never knew I had! It must be at least 10 years old, but I really love the colours. It only needed a border,  but the border fabric that was with it was a bit short, and that's probably why it became a UFO....at that time I didn't know what to do next.
I put on a narrow border of the purple fabric and then crazy pieced the  purple scraps around some stray dragons for cornerstones.


I just did a stitch in the ditch and straight diagonal quilting through the purple chains, and added some free motion quilting in the borders around the dragons just for fun.



The quilt backing is made from fabrics donated to the guild, and I especially like the frog fabric at the top.


And this is the finished quilt - with an orange binding (because I ran out of the purple). I think a little child will enjoy this happy quilt and I am delighted that this quilt is done in plenty of time for the June deadline for donation.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today is the day for the winners to be drawn for the One World - One Heart Event. I have picked the prize winners using the random number generator. Check this posting to see who my winners are. It was a lot of fun to participate in this event and although I didn't get around to see all 426 listed blogs, I did visit many of them and found lots of inspiration and "artist eye candy"!
On this Valentine's Day I hope to have some time to continue quilting the border of the comfort quilt. I decided to try what is called a "feather design" in the border, but when I am quilting it, I think of it as a "continuous hearts" design. It takes a lot of practise to get the loops the correct size to fill up the border space, and to have the heart edges look smooth and rounded. I didn't use a pattern to trace or sew on, just free motion quilting.
As I was quilting away, I was thinking about how this quilt really is a community gift of love. The fabric for the quilt was either donated to the guild and/or purchased with money that was raised by guild members for the purpose of making comfort quilts. You can read more about this guild project by clicking here. There were 8 women that worked on the planning, fabric cutting, and sewing together of this quilt top. The women were Joan, Marion, Judy, Mary, Lana, Marg, Anne and Bev. Then the top, batting and backing came to me and I will baste, quilt, and put the binding on. Then it will go to our local hospital where it will be given to a child who has been hospitalized on the Pediatric Sexual Assault Treatment Unit. I hope the child believes that there are wonderful, loving people in the world who made this quilt just for her and that we are sending her lots of loving, healing thoughts and wishes for a happy life.
And that's what Valentine's Day is about...celebrating love and spreading it around in our families and communities!
Happy Valentine's Day!

Guild Meeting

I find it hard to believe that anyone could enjoy a guild meeting more than I do! I get so excited to see my quilting friends and all their amazing work that sometimes I get a post-guild headache! And always, as happened last night, I can't settle down and go to sleep when I get home. Last night I didn't get home from the meeting until 10:30 pm and even though I was exhausted, I couldn't fall asleep. So today I have a "guild meeting hangover"!

It was the last guild meeting of the season and the deadline for submitting quilts for the Pediatric Sexual Assault Unit. Last week I photographed all the quilts received, and at guild meeting last night, I photographed more quilts, so we have exceeded the original goal of 50 quilts by having almost 70 quilts donated!

Here are the two quilts I finished for the meeting. Both quilts were Blocks of the Month, where the pattern is printed in the monthly newsletter and guild members make blocks to donate to this charity project. The quilt on the right is the disappearing 9 patch block and you can view a tutorial on how to make this pattern by clicking here. Thanks to Kim for this link - you can click here to see her quilt made with this idea! I did not make any of the blocks in these quilts. Joan Hett pieced the blocks together for the quilt on the left and Barb Jordan and I pieced together the blocks on the right. Then we used these quilts at our guild newbie day to demonstrate adding borders, pin basting and machine quilting. So the quilt on the left was a practise piece for 5 or 6 new quilters. It is stitched in the ditch and straight line stitched on the diagonals. I free motion quilted the quilt on the right. I used a hand quilting thread that I wanted to use up, and it gave me tension trouble but I didn't give up and made it work! This is a photo of some of the quilts that were donated. I can't tell you how wonderful these quilts are! So much work has gone into this pile and all of the time and materials were donated by the wonderful women in the guild who want to donate a symbol of comfort to victims of abuse in our community. And here is a photo of some of the quilts and the project coordinator Joan Hett, who is a tireless volunteer. She organized the project, got funding to buy batting and other supplies. She collected donated fabrics, organized block/quilt kits for quilters to sew, and then collected the finished quilts. Her basement has been taken over by this project! She is one of the most generous, wonderful women I know...thanks for all you have done Joan!